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Show Lincoln Highway "The Main Street of Whole Nation" Every American should know the essential facts about the great Lincoln Lin-coln highway the longest through connecting road in the world; the best known in the world; the most traveled road in the world; the greatest great-est memorial road; in the world. The Lincoln highway is the backbone back-bone the main line of the American highway transportation system, now gradually developing under the direction direc-tion of the federal government. From it branch important highways leading lead-ing to every section of the United States. The Lincoln highway bisects the very heart of the Union, serving 60 per cent of the population of the United States and being. directly available to 67 per cent of the registered regis-tered automobiles. For ten years it has been called "The Main Street of the Nation." It is dedicated! as a national na-tional memorial to President Lincoln In 1912, America was spending millions and getting nowhere in the development of national highway system. At that time our road construction con-struction consisted of some 30,000 separate, disconnected minor political politi-cal subdivisions. The federal government had nothing no-thing to do with highway construction construc-tion then. Most of the states had: no highway departments and road work was conducted in a hit or miss way by counties and townships. Those with vision fersaw that the American public could not obtain 10 per cent of the service value of the motor vehicles ve-hicles in which it was even then investing in-vesting over $45,000,000 a year, without proper roads over which to operate them. Public education was necessary as to the need for more highway construction and its consen-tration consen-tration on roads which led from some place to some place. So the Lincoln Highway association associa-tion wa s inrnrnnMtodi in Tunc 1 Q 1 ) with the avowed purpose of "immediately "immed-iately promoting and securing the establishment of a continuing connected, con-nected, improved highway from the Atlantic to the Pacific, open to lawful law-ful traffic of all descriptions, without toll charges, and to be of concrete where practicable." Thus the Lincoln Lin-coln highway as the first nationally important, through route was undertaken under-taken as an object lesson road." It was a start toward national highway system. The route ws carefully and painstakingly pains-takingly laid out between New York and San Francisco to be the shortest and most direct consistent with the topography of the country. Its length is 3305 miles from Times sn.ur.re, Manhattan, to Golden Gate in San Francisco. The work of the Lincoln Highway association has been successfully beyond be-yond the most optimistic expectations expecta-tions of those who started it. But a line on the map ten years ago:, today the Lincoln highway is 90 per cent a paved road of 45 miles west of the Mississippi river. By the end of the season there will be less than 60 miles of unpaved road out of the 1st 1100 miles west of New York City. Work is rapidly progressing with federal aid between the Mississippi river and the Pacific coast, andi already, al-ready, after ten years of effoTt, the completion of the route can be foreseen. fore-seen. It now carries a tremendous local, lo-cal, interstate and cross-country traffic. traf-fic. The following table provides a picture pic-ture of the amounts invested in the improvement of the Lincoln highway high-way 1914 to 1922 inclusive, and shows the continuous progressive development de-velopment of the route in 1922, 235 miles of new construction were completed com-pleted at a cost of over six million dollars. A greater mileage will be finished fin-ished this year. 1914 $1,200,000 191 5 2.580,220 1916 ' 4,550.1 65 1917 2,500.918 1915 2,996,307 1919 9. 386,800 1920 8,422,060 j 1921 9,472,900 1922 6,0b6,168 Tl exp'd in 9 years $47,185,604 In 1921 congress passed the federal feder-al highway act, providing a national system of important highways, approximately ap-proximately 180 000 miles in extent, which will serve more than 75 per cent of the total traffic of the Union. This system will now progress to completion within the next fifteen vears with the aid of federal appropriations. appro-priations. Every state in the Union has now a highway department organized or-ganized in accordance with the provisions pro-visions of the federal law and county coun-ty and township units of highway construction are gradually merging with the more Important and essential essen-tial state systems which themselves link up to form a transportation system sys-tem of national service. During the past ten years the Lincoln Lin-coln Highway association, with head-nuarters head-nuarters in Detroit, Mich., has brought the Lincoln way near to completion through its educational efforts and expenditure of over $900-000, $900-000, and has aided tn bringing about the national recognition of the need for better highways which now exist. ex-ist. This year the route will be in the finest condition of its ten year history his-tory and will carry over 60,000 cars across the continent during the touring tour-ing season between June 1 and October Oct-ober 15. The only real difficulty will be encountered in Western Utah. Ely Record |